1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of telecommunications and pertains particularly to methods and apparatus for hands-free initiation of a communications session between two or more parties over a network.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
In the art of telecommunication, hands-free communication is an important goal for companies that provide communications appliances and mobile software applications. In typical voice communications, there are a number of regimens that seek to provide mostly hands-free initiation of telephone calls. These include voice activation whereby a user says the name of a contact and then says call, whereby the communications appliance enabled with voice recognition initiates a call based on the spoken commands of the user. Earpieces are commonplace and enable communication in a hands-free fashion on many appliances once the call is in progress. Speed dialing by touching a single button to initiate a communication session is also very common.
A challenge with complete hands-free initiation of a voice/video session between two communications appliances over a network is that current hands-free protocols are too cumbersome for some users, especially those who are not computer literate such as very young children or others with no prior computing experience. Moreover, some prior knowledge of the process for initiating the two-way voice/video call is required. Therefore, what is clearly needed is a system for hands-free voice/video session initiation using face detection.